On a Friday night in Davis Square, the colorful lights of the sign for the Somerville Theater reflect on a crowded sidewalk. Inside, a double feature draws a mixed crowd of students, families and regulars excited for another 70 mm screening. The lobby smells like fresh popcorn, and the beer line is steady. Across the river in Brookline, the Coolidge Corner Theatre comes alive, its marquee a reminder of a building once nearly completely lost. Inside, excitement spills into the theater houses and the glow of the screen leaks under the doors, a reminder that the theater was built to be filled. It all looks effortless, but keeping the pictures playing has not always been so simple.
2025 box office numbers remain well below pre-COVID highs as streaming and binge-watching continue to dominate how people consume media. Against that backdrop, the Somerville Theater and The Coolidge Corner Theatre have carved out unique identities, drawing loyal audiences by staying true to what sets them apart. Instead of chasing trends or bending to streaming culture, they've defined clear boundaries around their mission and identity, and that clarity has become their greatest strength.
Independent theaters in Boston are surviving by setting boundaries. Profit keeps their doors open, but their identity is what keeps their theaters full.
Balancing the two has never been easy, and both theaters have had to decide what lines they will not cross. Knowing who they are is what keeps their audiences coming back, and what makes them both unique, unlike any other theater.
The Somerville Theater's Creative Director Ian Judge understands that staying profitable means understanding the long game. "There are going to be months where you show a very popular movie and make a lot of money. There are also going to be months where you lose some money," explains Judge. "It's important that at the end of the year, you end up above water."
Judge programs Somerville Theater's calendar with both passion and pragmatism. "There are things you do for love, and there are things you do for money," he says. That's why the theater recently screened two lesser-known documentaries, "Drop Dead City" and "Ain't No Back to a Merry-Go-Round," which did not fill the theater in the way larger known films would. "It's important to play movies like that."
That same philosophy powers their themed repertory series. Their most recent, titled "Fuck the Nazis," featured multiple movies where the Nazis get their asses kicked. Individually, the movies in a series like that may not turn a profit, but the series themselves create identity and loyalty to the theater. "Your goal is not that every film makes money individually," says Judge. "It's that the series as a whole does. And even when it doesn't, you look at it as the cost of doing business and keeping your theater relevant while maintaining its identity."
The building itself helps diversify them. The Crystal Ballroom on the top floor above the theater, along with their main movie house both host live music and events, giving them an additional revenue stream. "If we were just a repertory house, it would be tough. If we were just showing new movies, it would be tough. If we were just doing concerts, we probably wouldn't be open," Judge says. "But when you put them all together, it gives us the flexibility where if one is not doing so well, the other one is and can make up for it."
Maintaining an identity also means being able to know what your audience wants. "The advantage of being a small theater is we can talk to our customers. We can keep up with what our customers want to see."
"AMC is headquartered in Kansas City. They don't talk to their customers. We do."
Built as a church in 1906 and redesigned to be a theater in 1933, The Coolidge Corner Theatre nearly closed in the late 1980s until the Brookline community rallied to save it in 1988. That origin set the tone: the Coolidge would be defined not by the market, but by its community.
Executive Director and CEO Katherine Tallman, who has led the nonprofit for more than a decade, brought financial discipline to the beloved art house. She oversaw a $14 million campaign and expansion which added two more screens and a dedicated education room that opened on March 27, 2024. None of that changed their original identity. "Pretty much everything we do has to be aligned with our mission," she says. "That's non-negotiable."
"We will show films that we know are going to lose money because they are mission fulfilling, and other films, blockbuster films that we get asked to play, we just won't show…even if they would be very profitable. That's not who we are."
She says their mission: to entertain, inform, and engage, building a vital community through film culture, is what sets their boundaries. "We will show films that we know are going to lose money because they are mission fulfilling, and other films, blockbuster films that we get asked to play, we just won't show…even if they would be very profitable. That's not who we are."
The new education center that now brings hundreds of students each year for special screenings tied to their curriculum. "The appetite for that is just immense," Tallman says. "The teachers love it. The students love it. We love it, and our donors love it." The program hosted more than 2,400 students in its first year and continues to grow, proving that the Coolidge is not just preserving cinema in Brookline, it's cultivating its next generation of audiences.
Staying true to their identity has also earned the Coolidge respect well beyond Brookline. Director Paul Thomas Anderson, who has long known the theater and "likes what they do," supported its selection for screenings of his new movie "One Battle After Another," starring Leonardo DiCaprio, in VistaVision, one of four theaters in the world projecting it in the rare format.
"We are really known and well regarded for our projection quality," says Tallman. "We will often send a film out better than when it came in to us. We run every film in every house before showtimes, making sure we are giving our customers the highest possible quality."
Boston's independent theaters are not just surviving, they're rewriting the rules on how independent cinemas can thrive in 2025 and beyond. Their success is not inevitable, nor is it accidental. It is the product of constant choices: when to chase a profit, when to risk a loss, when to draw the line and say "that's just not who we are," or "we do this because it's important to our mission." Together, they make Boston one of the country's strongest film cities, not because they share the same identity, but because they don't. Each theater has its own identity, and that uniqueness is what keeps Boston's independent theaters alive.